Okay, everyone. I’m leaving tomorrow for Ghana and as a consequence, my internet access is going to be severely limited. I’m going to try to update every now and then. There will still be reviews, but I will more likely be telling jocular stories of stomach ache in Senegal, etc. I am so excited. This will be five continents and counting. Not that it’s a competition.

Meanwhile, I am still deciding what books to take with me. I’m really stumped, because I want books that will last five weeks in non-anglophone countries where it will be hard to get new ones, but books that are compelling enough to read for long, long plane and bus trips. Ryszard Kapuscinski’s In the Shadow of the Sun is a definite yes, I think. I read a few African authors when I studied postcolonial literature, but none since then. For its heft, I considered taking Robin Lane Fox’s The Classical World, but the irony of that choice is not lost on me. If I could reduce the Twilight books into a tiny package, I would take those, but I’m not into electronic reading yet. I’m halfway through D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers but I’m loathe to take a half-read book. I might consider a slender Freud tome.

So difficult! Any suggestions? Long and compelling books for travelling?

If Tao Lin is the self-referential, disaffected freak-pop on the literary twenty-something’s jukebox, then Erlend Loe is the guy sitting in the corner at the piano, picking out notes that eventually turn into a tune. Naive.Super is a tiny charmer, a ripe fig that falls out of a budget store Christmas cracker onto your toe. Sure, it’s 12 years old, but it remains a fresh antithesis to the meta-literary swagger of the 21st century, an antidote to superanalysis and overcomplexity.

It’s Christmas, and the protagonist (no name at first) is about to lose a croquet game to his brother. Not only does he lose the game, he also loses it generally, and big time. So he decides to take a break. He meets a child called Borre (misspelled because I can’t figure out how to do accents on my computer yet. Norwegian trivia: Borre is the Norwegian equivalent to a name like Hubert or Eugene), with whom he plays animal-numbering games: how many animals have you seen in your life? He rediscovers the ataractic pleasures of childhood toys, he reads books about time. He takes a trip to New York.

Often when I see someone (read: a wanker) being self-indulgent (read: “my music, you know, it’s kind of neo-art-folk”) I say disbelievingly: “Absolutely no irony!” Well, it applies here too, but not in the bad way. The most surprising thing about this book is its simple directness; its lack of irony and violence. Usually when book plots get described like in the paragraph above, anticipation builds up — the feeling that there is something bigger bubbling under the who-what-where details. But in the case of Naive.Super, there’s actually not much more under the surface than what you find out straight away. It’s definitely not the worse off for it; Naive.Super is gently pained and interesting and sweet. The protagonist’s curious sidesteps into feeling alive are treated with lightness and dignity. Though if you’re anything like me, you’ll feel strange not receiving the pistol whip of verbal upheavals and sarcastic depradations from what looks and seems like another disaffected-youth novel.

Another good thing about this book is that it’ll take you three days maximum. Loe’s amiable observations aren’t incisive enough to be life-changing, but it’s a charming public transport companion. In fact, Naive.Super is a pretty good companion, full stop.

Oh, big juicy final peanut M & M in the green mixed M & M packet. I didn’t think there were any peanut M & Ms left, but there you are, sweetly glinting at me.

Uh…oh, hey you guys. To take you out from this admittedly chronically under-review-laden week, here’s a comic that in no way expresses how I sometimes feel as an academic editor:

http://www.marriedtothesea.com/

No, seriously. Academics are good at doing references. And I don’t condone stoning at all, not one bit. And we use the AGPS Style Manual, anyway. Ha!

I’m going to be on Arts Mitten on Sunday, talking about zines. Tune in to student radio, it’ll make you feel good.

I’m between books at the moment. Okay, that’s a lie. I’ve got five finished, unreviewed books on my desk. But the book I want to review first I’ve somehow lost. That’s my excuse, anyway.

In lieu of a review, I thought I’d have a look at my “canonical reading” credibility. Lauren (she of the beautiful house interiors) emailed me Time Magazine’s ‘All-Time’ 100 Novels List. It was written in 2005, but a list is still a list. Banal and territorial they might be, but Lord love a list. I won’t post the whole thing, but here’s a link. The best thing about these lists are the indignant (and ungrammatical) comments from readers. Susan Sayfan from Longwood says: “Where is Ayn Rand and John Irving? I checked your list twice, I can’t believe you did not list either author.” Ah, indignation. It’s only a couple of letters away from indigestion.

I’ve read 21 out of the 100. A bit bare-bones on the canon, Estelle:

Animal Farm George Orwell
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret Judy Blume
Beloved Toni Morrison
The Blind Assassin Margaret Atwood
The Corrections Jonathan Franzen
The Crying of Lot 49 Thomas Pynchon
The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis
Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
1984 George Orwell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Ken Kesey
Possession A.S. Byatt
Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
White Noise Don DeLillo
White Teeth Zadie Smith
Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys

How do you feel about lists like these? How many have you read?

The Tin Princess is the fourth of Philip Pullman’s Victorian young adult mystery books. I’m the first to acknowledge that my blog has been broken-recordy lately: Philip Pullman … blah blah blah … amazing … Philip Pullman … amazing … blah blah blah. Sorry. But he really is super good at what he does.

So instead of a regular thumbs up review, I thought I’d say something about why I think he is so good. When I am impressed by an adventure story, it’s because I feel like I myself take a kick in the guts every now and then. Pullman is good at serving up that kick, and one of the tricks he uses is pulling a moment wide open right in the middle of an action scene, using detail to forge a connection between the characters. For example, a seemingly benign introduction:

Jim noticed that both of them were immediately aware of the way he made the introduction: they were introduced to her, not she to them, so she must be their social superior. There was a bristle of surprise, and then it was his turn.

or, at the end of a wild chase:

Off balance, they stumbled and gathered themselves to look up at the face of a woman: a beautiful, dark-eyed, bare-shouldered, raven-tressed Spanish-looking actress in a scarlet gown. She was frightened; she could hardly speak for the rapid beating of her heart.

Notice the way he uses the physical reactions of the characters. Yet he doesn’t give the characters or the reader the luxury of contemplation, he moves right along. The result being that you know that something important has happened, but not what the significance of it is yet. Effective, and much more exciting than just a plain old donnybrooking.

Recommended for: you, her, him, them, everyone.

Look at this beautiful picture of Kreme Life’s wallpaper that uses a candy-pink hardcover of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty as midground. My silly old paperback doesn’t look quite the same anymore. Via Design Sponge.

I’ve had a ratty old week, getting shots for Northwest Africa. Today I had to get my visa, and besides being generally disorganised myself, the STA Travel Offices (yes, I had to go to two separate ones) were stressful and gave me hives; I think i’m allergic to contradictory information. But when I went to get a money order from the post office, the desk clerk who served me was a beacon of peaceful awesomeness with a sweet, light (American? Canadian?) voice. So thank you, A’Beckett Street post office clerk.

Have a good weekend, people.

Dear Australian Federal Government,

Good move.

Kind regards,
Estelle